The document describes 2 different use cases for ignoring files, but neither of them is the one I think is the most common for users: To be able to turn off a particular lint rule globally for a user (sorry Hadolint, nobody has time to version pin and adjust everything). In example I just want it to never bother me about hadolint DL3041 ever again but still want the lest of the lint rules. THe docs describe how to add annotation to every single ne of my files to do it, or how to entirely ignore files, but not how to just globally ignore a lint rule.